You can't buy an adventure. Not a proper, personalised one that you will remember forever. You can buy a pre-made experience; a safari in Africa, or a cruise to the Antarctic; but the chances are that the real adventure will happen on the way to the airport, or while you are waiting in a line somewhere. Not the type of adventure that makes for a good photo book, but the type that changes you in some way, and has an influence over what comes next.
It took my cat, Miss Binks, to teach me this.
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| Miss Binks, the sage. |
At the time, my partner and I were living in Sydney's inner-west. Newtown was slowly, messily evolving from a suburb of migrants and vagrants to a colorful, multicultural hub. We lived in a narrow Victorian terrace with original sandstone walls, and shared the street with an ageing Greek couple and their schizophrenic son, an artists' collective in a crumbling mansion at the top of the street, and a homeless Mission at the bottom. A Chinese family lived on the right and a Maltese bus driver on the left. Next to him, an alcoholic pensioner whom we rarely saw. Two doors further down, an extended Samoan family sang harmoniously on Sunday afternoons
This was a rich environment for social and cultural interaction, but my partner and I were not social people. In fact, the thing I feared most (apart from drowning in an enclosed space) was making small talk with strangers. Richard and I were focused on our careers, and neither of us felt any need to expand either our social or cultural horizons, and hence we kept largely to ourselves.
Our disdain for company, however, only extended as far as the human race, so during the early years of our relationship we acquired a dog, an axolotl, several frogs, three cats and three horses. The dog had been rehomed prior to our move to Newtown and the horses lived on a farm at Camden, leaving our genetically blended household ruled by the triumvirate of felines, a volatile state of affairs on a constant knife-edge of diplomacy.
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| Fleeting moment of harmony captured using an extremely fast shutter speed. |
We did, for a short while allow the cats free range of our backyard and, it soon became evident, the neighbours' as well.
"Your cat is using my herb garden as a toilet," said Maurice, the Maltese bus driver. We let that pass, as many other neighbourhood cats also used his herb garden as a toilet so it didn't seem fair to single ours out. But I felt compelled to action when I caught our silver tabby, Lucky, engaged in a staring contest with a caged canary.
"Your cat comes to visit my bird all the time," said the four year old Chinese boy from next door. "My bird goes ..." the boy fluttered his hands in a very passable imitation of a small creature in fear of its life. "He doesn't like it." He used that solemn tone with which preschoolers relay anything from the death of their grandmother to the fact that Peppa Pig is inexplicably covered in poo.
Lucky, Barron and Miss Binks became indoor cats. Or rather, they became cats who lived indoors but spent most of their time plotting about how to get out.
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| She looks relaxed, but she is just awaiting her chance. |
We were all distracted the night Miss Binks went missing. The Samoans began singing around five. The trouble was, they had begun drinking around mid-day and the singing soon morphed to shouting, then fighting, and the fight naturally spilled out into the street, at which stage the police were called. This, in itself, was nothing particularly unusual; we had cause to call either the police or the ambulance (and occasionally the fire brigade) at least once a month. We watched from our upstairs verandah, and it had a peaceful outcome because as soon as the red and blue lights appeared the warring Samoans forgot their feud and fell to being best mates again. Once the drama was over, we realised that our usually curious cats were absent.
Rattling the box of fish treats brought Barron and Lucky racing from the enclosed outside courtyard, weaving and shoving in their urgency to get through the cat door first. Miss Binks, however, was not with them. I opened cupboard doors and slid out drawers (she had once spent an entire night amongst the saucepans).
Our terrace house was long and thin, the kitchen giving way to a small laundry next to a glass door that opened onto our leafy backyard. A wooden fence separated us from the neighbours and a ricketty wooden gate gave access to the street behind, where we rarely went except to take out the garbage.
There was no sign of Miss Binks out there, and I could not work out how she would have escaped, but we all know cats are little Ninjas.
After securing Lucky and Binks upstairs in our bedroom, I opened the back door and rattled the fish treats.
"Binks! Miss Binks. Come on Binkster!"
No answering meow, no rustle as she scrambled back over the fence. I could hear Lucky and Barron calling from the bedroom, and the occasional thump as one or another launched himself at the door in the hope that, on this night of nights, it would miraculously open.
I persisted for ten minutes or so, but elicited nothing else except a faint, "Shut the f*** up!" from beyond the fence.
One or other of the cats had escaped before, and although we imagined the worst, they only stayed away long enough to prove that they were not responding to our requests for them to come home.
This time was different, though, and Miss Binks did not reappear. When dawn came, I opened the back gate and walked up and down the street. A hollow feeling grew in my stomach as I checked yards and gutters, dreading the thought that I might find a furry tortoiseshell body that had been crushed by a car.
By the time I got home, I was in tears.
"She's gone," I told Richard; the unthinkable conviction having grown stronger and stronger as the morning wore on. "I've looked everywhere."
"Then we'll just have to go door to door," he replied. Such a simple solution that brought, I have to admit, some trepidation, as the rear street was so inhospitable. The houses were either shuttered or abandoned-looking. It was like another world. Who, or what, might we rouse from behind those peeling doors?
The street behind our house described a dog-leg that backed onto the Princes Highway, one of the busiest and seediest roads of the inner-west. After a road closure at one end, this short cut between two major roads had been cut off, like the oxbow curve of a meandering river. And, like many backwaters, this street had become stagnant and smelly. Formerly glorious ornamental fountains and columns were crumbling and algae-encrusted; sidewalks were decorated with discarded shopping trolleys and the unsavoury leavings from late night patrons of the Newtown Hotel. Walls were covered in graffiti and had boarded up windows. A house number had been chiselled from the sandstone. Opposite, the gate in an ivy-covered fence was secured with a rusty padlock. Advertising flyers in various stages of biodegradation bristled from the mailbox.
I traversed the uneven path to number 82, regarded coldly by a brace of flaking concrete flamingos, and was relieved when no-one answered my knock. I told myself that I had not seen the dusty blinds twitch and ignored the chords of Bernard Hermann's "Pyscho" playing in my head.
I had all but given up by the time I tried 84; a classic workers cottage. A barred window looked straight onto a retaining wall, decorated with waste paper, ferns and tracks of slime where water trickled from the earth. I heard a television playing behind the door as I rang the doorbell then, when it did not work, knocked.
"Who is it?"
I had not rehearsed any introduction. "I'm Geraldine. I live in the house behind you. Um, I've lost my cat."
The door opened far enough to reveal a middle-aged woman in an old dressing gown and slippers, and emit a reek of cigarette smoke. "What sort of cat?"
"A tortoiseshell, sort of ginger and white. She went missing last night, I thought you might have seen ..."
"What's going on?" called a male voice from a back room.
"Some girl," the woman yelled over her shoulder. "Lost her cat!" She turned back to me, "Yes, I've seen her."
My heart jumped. "Really!" I couldn't believe my good luck. "When did you see her?"
"This morning."
"Do you have any idea where she went?"
"She's here."
"In your backyard?"
"No, she's inside the house."
Considering the fact that it was almost impossible to get the cats back inside our house once they had escaped, I wondered how this feat had been managed.
"I opened the front door last night to take out some rubbish," the woman explained, "and she rushed straight between my legs! I think she must have been frightened."
Rattling the box of fish treats brought Barron and Lucky racing from the enclosed outside courtyard, weaving and shoving in their urgency to get through the cat door first. Miss Binks, however, was not with them. I opened cupboard doors and slid out drawers (she had once spent an entire night amongst the saucepans).
Our terrace house was long and thin, the kitchen giving way to a small laundry next to a glass door that opened onto our leafy backyard. A wooden fence separated us from the neighbours and a ricketty wooden gate gave access to the street behind, where we rarely went except to take out the garbage.
There was no sign of Miss Binks out there, and I could not work out how she would have escaped, but we all know cats are little Ninjas.
After securing Lucky and Binks upstairs in our bedroom, I opened the back door and rattled the fish treats.
"Binks! Miss Binks. Come on Binkster!"
No answering meow, no rustle as she scrambled back over the fence. I could hear Lucky and Barron calling from the bedroom, and the occasional thump as one or another launched himself at the door in the hope that, on this night of nights, it would miraculously open.
I persisted for ten minutes or so, but elicited nothing else except a faint, "Shut the f*** up!" from beyond the fence.
One or other of the cats had escaped before, and although we imagined the worst, they only stayed away long enough to prove that they were not responding to our requests for them to come home.
This time was different, though, and Miss Binks did not reappear. When dawn came, I opened the back gate and walked up and down the street. A hollow feeling grew in my stomach as I checked yards and gutters, dreading the thought that I might find a furry tortoiseshell body that had been crushed by a car.
By the time I got home, I was in tears.
"She's gone," I told Richard; the unthinkable conviction having grown stronger and stronger as the morning wore on. "I've looked everywhere."
"Then we'll just have to go door to door," he replied. Such a simple solution that brought, I have to admit, some trepidation, as the rear street was so inhospitable. The houses were either shuttered or abandoned-looking. It was like another world. Who, or what, might we rouse from behind those peeling doors?
The street behind our house described a dog-leg that backed onto the Princes Highway, one of the busiest and seediest roads of the inner-west. After a road closure at one end, this short cut between two major roads had been cut off, like the oxbow curve of a meandering river. And, like many backwaters, this street had become stagnant and smelly. Formerly glorious ornamental fountains and columns were crumbling and algae-encrusted; sidewalks were decorated with discarded shopping trolleys and the unsavoury leavings from late night patrons of the Newtown Hotel. Walls were covered in graffiti and had boarded up windows. A house number had been chiselled from the sandstone. Opposite, the gate in an ivy-covered fence was secured with a rusty padlock. Advertising flyers in various stages of biodegradation bristled from the mailbox.
I traversed the uneven path to number 82, regarded coldly by a brace of flaking concrete flamingos, and was relieved when no-one answered my knock. I told myself that I had not seen the dusty blinds twitch and ignored the chords of Bernard Hermann's "Pyscho" playing in my head.
I had all but given up by the time I tried 84; a classic workers cottage. A barred window looked straight onto a retaining wall, decorated with waste paper, ferns and tracks of slime where water trickled from the earth. I heard a television playing behind the door as I rang the doorbell then, when it did not work, knocked.
"Who is it?"
I had not rehearsed any introduction. "I'm Geraldine. I live in the house behind you. Um, I've lost my cat."
The door opened far enough to reveal a middle-aged woman in an old dressing gown and slippers, and emit a reek of cigarette smoke. "What sort of cat?"
"A tortoiseshell, sort of ginger and white. She went missing last night, I thought you might have seen ..."
"What's going on?" called a male voice from a back room.
"Some girl," the woman yelled over her shoulder. "Lost her cat!" She turned back to me, "Yes, I've seen her."
My heart jumped. "Really!" I couldn't believe my good luck. "When did you see her?"
"This morning."
"Do you have any idea where she went?"
"She's here."
"In your backyard?"
"No, she's inside the house."
Considering the fact that it was almost impossible to get the cats back inside our house once they had escaped, I wondered how this feat had been managed.
"I opened the front door last night to take out some rubbish," the woman explained, "and she rushed straight between my legs! I think she must have been frightened."
I looked past the woman into the forbidding hallway. Yes, she must have been quite frightened indeed.
"I don't know where she's gone," the woman continued.
I was enormously relieved that Miss Binks was still alive, and in the general vicinity, but I didn't quite have her back yet.
"Do you want to come in?" the woman asked.
No, I thought.
"Maybe she'll come to you?"
"Thank you," I took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold.
Once inside, I could smell something lurking beneath the cigarette smoke; rising damp and either sage or sewerage - I couldn't tell which. The terrace was long and skinny, dark doorways opening from the dim hallway. It reminded me of the catacombs of St Paul's basilica.
The door shut behind me. I had a moment of misgiving. Had this woman really seen Miss Binks? Or were she and her disembodied partner making the most of an opportunity to snatch their next victim?
But I had a mission; to rescue my cat; which helped me push that fear aside.
"Binks!" I called hopefully. "Miss Binks. Come on." I looked left. The first room was spartan, with wooden furniture and no real place to hide. I moved further down the hallway and looked up the steps. She could have gone upstairs.
Where, I thought, would I hide if I were a cat?
It seemed Miss Binks had suddenly decided she wanted off the street and shot in the first open door she saw. Then, when she realised it was not her door, she would have run to the first dark place she could find.
I turned from the stairs and looked into the room to the right of the hallway. The drapes were drawn, making it dim and cave like. The lounge and armchairs were upholstered in a dark paisley brocade with fringes almost the the floor. Just the sort of place a frightened cat would take refuge. I remembered those horror movies where the expendable actress stumbles around in dark calling, "Fluffy! Fluffy!" and wondered what else might be hiding in here?
"I've looked everywhere." I jumped; the woman was standing right behind me and I could feel her breath on my shoulder. "But I can't kneel down - the Arthuritis, you know."
"Miss Binks," I called. Did I imagine it, or did one of the fringes twitch. "Miss Binks?"
Then the fringe beneath the corner armchair parted and a white nose emerged. A face followed. Not a vampire, or a pyscho killer, but a feline face with huge green eyes.
"Binks!"
My cat crawled out from the shadows.
"Beautiful girl!" It is hard to describe my emotion as she ran to me. I scooped her up with my left hand and grasped her scruff gently with my right. I wasn't going to risk losing her again.
"I'm so sorry about this," I said to the watching woman, who suddenly seemed less of a threat and more of an ally.
"Not a problem," she said. "It all makes life more interesting."
I looked at the little tortoiseshell. Do we really need things to be more interesting? I was happy to leave that dark, dank house and felt some relief that my life was lighter and airier. But for the next ten years, whenever I saw that woman on the footpath, or at her window, we would share a smile and a wave, and I never again felt intimidated by the street behind the fence.
I returned home with Miss Binks thinking we'd both had quite the morning; entering unknown territory, well outside our comfort zones, with some risk and uncertainty along the way, but with a happy ending. Yes, it did make life more interesting. It would make for a good story one day.
And if you can tell a story about it, then you've had an adventure, whichever way you look at it.
I wondered whether Miss Binks' scary outing would make her any more cautious next time but it did not; if anything, she became more curious about what was outside the back door. Curiosity and cats don't mix well, at least that's what we are told, but a little adventure like the one Miss Binks and I had can certainly give you a taste for more.
"I don't know where she's gone," the woman continued.
I was enormously relieved that Miss Binks was still alive, and in the general vicinity, but I didn't quite have her back yet.
"Do you want to come in?" the woman asked.
No, I thought.
"Maybe she'll come to you?"
"Thank you," I took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold.
Once inside, I could smell something lurking beneath the cigarette smoke; rising damp and either sage or sewerage - I couldn't tell which. The terrace was long and skinny, dark doorways opening from the dim hallway. It reminded me of the catacombs of St Paul's basilica.
The door shut behind me. I had a moment of misgiving. Had this woman really seen Miss Binks? Or were she and her disembodied partner making the most of an opportunity to snatch their next victim?
But I had a mission; to rescue my cat; which helped me push that fear aside.
"Binks!" I called hopefully. "Miss Binks. Come on." I looked left. The first room was spartan, with wooden furniture and no real place to hide. I moved further down the hallway and looked up the steps. She could have gone upstairs.
Where, I thought, would I hide if I were a cat?
It seemed Miss Binks had suddenly decided she wanted off the street and shot in the first open door she saw. Then, when she realised it was not her door, she would have run to the first dark place she could find.
I turned from the stairs and looked into the room to the right of the hallway. The drapes were drawn, making it dim and cave like. The lounge and armchairs were upholstered in a dark paisley brocade with fringes almost the the floor. Just the sort of place a frightened cat would take refuge. I remembered those horror movies where the expendable actress stumbles around in dark calling, "Fluffy! Fluffy!" and wondered what else might be hiding in here?
"I've looked everywhere." I jumped; the woman was standing right behind me and I could feel her breath on my shoulder. "But I can't kneel down - the Arthuritis, you know."
"Miss Binks," I called. Did I imagine it, or did one of the fringes twitch. "Miss Binks?"
Then the fringe beneath the corner armchair parted and a white nose emerged. A face followed. Not a vampire, or a pyscho killer, but a feline face with huge green eyes.
"Binks!"
My cat crawled out from the shadows.
"Beautiful girl!" It is hard to describe my emotion as she ran to me. I scooped her up with my left hand and grasped her scruff gently with my right. I wasn't going to risk losing her again.
"I'm so sorry about this," I said to the watching woman, who suddenly seemed less of a threat and more of an ally.
"Not a problem," she said. "It all makes life more interesting."
I looked at the little tortoiseshell. Do we really need things to be more interesting? I was happy to leave that dark, dank house and felt some relief that my life was lighter and airier. But for the next ten years, whenever I saw that woman on the footpath, or at her window, we would share a smile and a wave, and I never again felt intimidated by the street behind the fence.
I returned home with Miss Binks thinking we'd both had quite the morning; entering unknown territory, well outside our comfort zones, with some risk and uncertainty along the way, but with a happy ending. Yes, it did make life more interesting. It would make for a good story one day.
And if you can tell a story about it, then you've had an adventure, whichever way you look at it.
I wondered whether Miss Binks' scary outing would make her any more cautious next time but it did not; if anything, she became more curious about what was outside the back door. Curiosity and cats don't mix well, at least that's what we are told, but a little adventure like the one Miss Binks and I had can certainly give you a taste for more.
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